Monday Musings - 29

And, here I am at the very last Monday of 2009. The last, little bits of the year are still to come...and there isn't even enough time to tie the loose ends, or so it seems. I wake up each morning, with a song in my heart. Some days it's a happy, yappy dance song..some days it's slightly sombre, and sometimes even a little bit sad. Because, this year has taken so much from me. But, it has also given me so much more. And, this week, it's been such a lovely week!

One of those weeks where you make friends with strangers, dance to 'Can't help falling in Love with You' just the way you'd like to, listen to Christmas carols, buy smiles, and pretty little dresses you otherwise wouldn't afford, and eat chocolate mousse with bread crumbs at 2 AM while watching everyone in glee. When you never sleep before 4 AM, because you're welcoming a friend into town, and then another one, every other day. Where dressing up is fun, because friends come over...where phone calls are quick two-minutes just to say, "Hey, I'm thinking of you," where food is divine. Soft roomali rotis, served with a spicy chicken bhuna on plastic tables. And, for some on car bonnets.

Where, the wind has gathered a swirl, and tugs at lonely hearts. Where the wind carries no answers, only a song, and joyous hearts. Where we think back at the year and how it began, and try and remember snatches of 2009. January, that started off slowly, and February that I cannot remember, and March that I need snatches of my writing to recollect. I can remember working late into many nights though. That was much of the beginning of 2009. April, beautiful for the sun, the sea, the frolic...May for the end of salsa lessons, and June for Goodbyes. Goodbyes aren't necessarily nice, unless their celebratory, and unless you know that this is just temporary. And, this too shall pass.

I can remember July, for Goodbyes again, and August, for Goodbyes too. This time around, it was farewell to a company I had breathed, lived, loathed and loved for two years. September, I said Goodbye again. To the city of Mumbai, and then, I wasn't sure when I was going to be back again. But, I was back within six weeks, and then October I said Goodbye again, to a city I had fallen so much in love with.

November, I said Goodbye to two friends. None easily done, but what must be, will be. And, here I am in December, ready to say Goodbye again. To a year of Goodbyes, and hellos...because I must tell you that in 2009, I found so many friends. Even friends left behind, their friendship never forgotten.

It has been such a year, hasn't it. Changes, and trials, and goodbyes, and new love, and mostly a feeling of I won't back down. It has been so beautiful too, full of new experiences. I learned salsa, and went camping, and traveled, and lived alone, and stayed in a hotel room where I was so terrified of being alone, and watched three sunrises in a row, and danced all night, and lost love, and wrote, and had a slight happy brush with the publishing business, and read poetry to an audience, and made so many new friends. And, I even kept with my tradition of making movie lists, and book lists, and watched theatre too. The joy. But, most all, somewhere in the middle of 2009, I began to write every Monday. And, that to me, is the most beautiful thing of 2009. Because, there's something about delving into yourself each Monday.

And, then on, something about reading your comments, and your thoughts and most of all your kind words...

[The year in Monday Musings here ]